Smugglers, Boat Bandits Beware : City Police Will Take to the Water in Effort to Curb Mission Bay Crime

For the first time, San Diego police officers are patroling Mission Bay in search of crime. And they have reason to believe they’ll find it.

Drug smugglers and boat thieves--thought to thrive in the tame waters of Mission Bay--will now have to be more cautious in practicing their trade, police say.

A team of police officers was assigned, starting Saturday, to an around-the-clock patrol of the sparkling waters, grassy parks and parking lots. This is the first time in the 32-year history of the recreational area that city police officers have patrolled the bay by boat and kept an eye on the 1,800 acres of parkland surrounding it, said Assistant Police Chief Robert Burgreen.

Although the Mission Bay Harbor Patrol--a 21-member team that has monitored boat traffic and conducted rescue operations there since the bay was created--issues citations for unruly boaters, its members are not sworn officers and cannot carry guns. A city task force said last year that the harbor patrol was inadequately trained to deal with the increase in criminal activities such as boat thefts and drug trafficking.

Put quite simply: “Mission Bay crime wasn’t being adequately addressed,” said Burgreen, who was a member of the task force, which also recommended horse patrols in Balboa Park.

The new squad, initially to consist of six seasoned police officers and one sergeant, begins cruising the bay and parks during an especially crowded week because of the Easter holiday. It is estimated that on an average weekend as many as 100,000 people visit Mission Bay Park.

“We aren’t taking this as a leisurely assignment,” said Sgt. Ron Brown, who will head the new squad and who organized its extensive training.

“We’re not going out there to be lifeguards. We’re going out there to be peace officers and enforce laws.”

To do the work, Brown arranged for 15 officers--members of the squad and others available for harbor duty--to receive special training. Because police officers typically work their beats from cars, not boats, Brown, a reserve officer in the Coast Guard, organized six weeks of classroom and practical work on everything from boat handling and marine engineering to how to conduct boating accident investigations.

The training cost the city only $500 thanks to classrooms and instructors’ time being donated to the police department, Brown said.

“I want my men to do pro-active work that aggressively seeks people smuggling dope, stealing boats or driving recklessly,” Brown said.

“I’m eager for success. I want to make Mission Bay a safer place to visit.”

First on the agenda for the squad, known as Beat 131, will be to keep track of all new boat thefts and thefts from boats, and to make the information available to boat and marina owners so that crime watch groups on the order of the Neighborhood Watch program can be formed, Brown said.

The officers will patrol the bay in a 22-foot powerboat about 16 hours each day, and they will cruise the parks on motorcycles or in cars the remainder of the time, Brown said.

Police officials are confident that the squad will have an immediate effect on drug trafficking and boat thefts. There are no statistics available on the number of boats stolen in the bay because the Harbor Patrol was not required to submit reports to police computer files, Brown said.

Brown said police believe that Mission Bay is a popular area for drug smugglers to drop off contraband from Mexico because of the lack of police presence there.

“We don’t have hard evidence that drug smuggling is occurring there, but we have strong suspicions,” said Brown, 43, who has been on the force nine years.

“If you were going to smuggle contraband from Mexico into San Diego . . . would you pick San Diego Bay, where the Harbor Police (armed officers) are, or Oceanside Bay, which is patroled by officers, or Mission Bay? I know which one I’d pick.”

Despite the changes, the Harbor Patrol will continue to cruise the bay with its four patrol boats and one firefighting boat just as it always has, said Art Belenzon, acting deputy director of parks and recreation, which oversees the group. Water safety and rescue operations will be its responsibilities, and the police will worry about ticketing people and arresting criminals, he said.